Mobile computing and communications platforms, such as smartphones and tablets, often consist of an application processor system-on-a-chip (SoC) and other hardware devices such as a cellular modem, wireless networking (WiFi) devices, and NAND storage devices. Communications between these hardware components require the definition of an interface, hardware components, such as a controller, to implement the interface, and an associated software stack to control the communication. The development of the required hardware and software components and the subsequent tuning to ensure the implementation is optimal is a resource intensive exercise that can impact the time to market of the solutions. Currently inter-chip communications are handled by a High Speed Inter-Chip interface used inside the platform to communicate with devices. However this interface is limited to 480 Mbps and does not provide bandwidth scalability. As used herein, inter-chip indicates communications inside the device, which may be between chips or internal circuit boards.
The universal serial bus (USB) is a ubiquitous peripheral-interconnect of choice for a large number of computing and consumer applications. Many systems provide a comprehensive set of software drivers to support commonly available USB peripherals. Further, there is an existing USB ecosystem that includes USB silicon suppliers, design houses, and verification and testing vendors that lower the cost of implementation for product manufacturers of USB hosts and peripherals. The USB 3.0 specification adds support for transfer speeds of 5 Gbps to address the need for higher bandwidth. However the USB 3.0 specification does not meet the requirements of embedded inter-chip interfaces with respect to power and EMI robustness.
The same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and the figures to reference like components and features. Numbers in the 100 series refer to features originally found in FIG. 1; numbers in the 200 series refer to features originally found in FIG. 2; and so on.